Richard Bartle’s pro-game rant

This is over a month old, but still well worth blogging about. Richard Bartle has written an excellent rant for The Guardian following the release of the Byron Report, which said that games are not the cause of all of our woes and misfortunes. Some choice extracts:

I’m talking to you, you self-righteous politicians and newspaper columnists, you relics who beat on computer games: you’ve already lost. Enjoy your carping while you can, because tomorrow you’re gone.

According to the UK Statistics Authority, the median age of the UK population is 39. Half the people who live here were born in 1969 or later. The BBC microcomputer was released in 1981, when those 1969ers were 12. It was ubiquitous in schools; it introduced a generation to computers. It introduced a generation to computer games.

Half the UK population has grown up playing computer games. They aren’t addicted, they aren’t psychopathic killers, and they resent those boneheads – that’s you – who imply that they are addicted and are psychopathic killers.

Next year, that 1969 will be 1970; the year after, it’ll be 1971.

Dwell on this, you smug, out-of-touch, proud-to-be-innumerate fossils: half the UK population thinks games are fun and cool, and you don’t. Those born in 1990 get the vote this year.